World-class Jodrell Bank is under threat and UK risks a physics brain drain | Astronomy
On a chilly day in December 1945, physicist Bernard Lovell of the University of Manchester set out for the Cheshire countryside to study cosmic rays, streams of high-energy particles streaking across the universe. While looking at signals from army surplus radar, he made an unexpected discovery: radio reflections from the ionized trails of shooting stars.
This work marked the birth of radio astronomy at Jodrell Bank. A year later, engineers at the site mounted a radar at the base of a projector, providing comprehensive access to accelerating meteors. When Sputnik was launched in 1957, they had just completed the Lovell telescope, the world’s largest radio telescope and the only telescope capable of tracking the Soviet satellite.
Through decades of upgrades, Jodrell Bank has remained world-class at the heart of a seven-telescope network called e-Merlin, the UK’s national radio astronomy capability. But as of Monday, the network and Jodrell Bank itself are threatened with closure. The Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) plans to withdraw funding in March 2028. All observations will be discontinued unless alternative support can be found.
Radio astronomy is not an obscure endeavor producing esoteric data. It changed our perspective on the universe. Armed with this technique, astronomers have detected rotating neutron stars that emit powerful beams, illuminating space like a beacon. They watched matter orbiting supermassive black holes and saw the faint glow that followed the big bang.
Astronomers, of course, have other telescopes with which they can look down, at least figuratively. But British researchers working on many of these are also facing major cutbacks. Last month, the Rubin Observatory in Chile began a decade-long project to record the largest cosmic movie ever. UK participation will fall by 20 per cent. The same goes for the observatory on La Palma in the Canary Islands. Work on the Bison solar observation network will drop by 40%. And the country is withdrawing from the Event Horizon Telescope, which captured the first image of a black hole. Astronomers agreed on the same words to describe the news: devastating, shocking, catastrophic.
During this year, STFC said it needed to save £162 million by 2030. The crisis follows cost overruns from rising electricity and staff costs and high exchange rates at international collaborations such as Cern, home of the Large Hadron Collider near Geneva. However, the figures obtained Research Expert News It suggests the situation could be worse, with total forecast costs for the four years of the government’s last spending review period exceeding £684 million.
Other areas of physics did not escape the axe. The Diamond synchrotron and the Isis muon and neutron source, both in Oxfordshire, face outages but will remain operational. The Clara facility in Cheshire, which is testing next-generation particle accelerator technologies, is being scrapped. The operating budget of the Boulby mine, the only deep underground science facility in the UK, is being cut by 40%. There is no funding for the LHCb experiment at the Large Hadron Collider, which could end the experiment early and leave 80% of the data uncollected.
STFC wants to prioritize certain research areas with the money it has. But the best scientists will go where the best science can be done. And the signs are ominous in this regard. A. latest survey It found that almost 80% of early career physicists considered leaving the UK after the funding crisis. The loss of even a fraction of this would be a blow to UK science. national growth. The task now is to persuade them to stay.
